Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
SPECIAL COMMUNICATIONA Cluster-Analytic Investigation of MMPI Profiles of Serious Male and Female Juvenile Offenders
Section snippets
Participants
Data for this study come from 141 assessments of male (n = 97) and female (n = 44) juvenile offenders incarcerated in the California Youth Authority (CYA). Participants ranged from 14 to 22 years of age (mean = 17.43, SD = 1.60). With respect to ethnicity among the male sample, 24% were African American, 45% were Hispanic, 24% were white, and 7% described themselves as other. For the female sample, 27% were African American, 23% were Hispanic, 34% were white, and 16% described themselves as
Male Cluster Membership and Cluster Profiles
For male participants, Ward's method indicated that a two-cluster solution provided the most clinically meaningful description of the data. Means and standard deviations of the validity and clinical scales are presented in Table 1. After identifying the two clusters, we obtained information from the MMPI literature that describes characteristics of adolescents and adults with similar profile configurations (Archer, 1987; Friedman et al., 1989; Graham, 1987; Williams, 1986).
Cluster 1—Normative.
DISCUSSION
The rates of mental illness among incarcerated youths are substantially higher than the rates in the general adolescent population (Kazdin, 2000). As observed in the present study, there are indeed adolescents within the juvenile justice system who suffer from psychological disturbances. Results of MMPI cluster analysis revealed two distinct profiles for male offenders and two others for female juvenile offenders. Our findings indicate that not only do males and females exhibit distinct MMPI
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Preparation of this manuscript was supported by funding to Dr. Cauffman from the Stanford Center on Adolescence and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Dr. Cauffman thanks the California Youth Authority, in particular Saeed Behshid and Rudy Haapanen, for their assistance with this study.